On My Radar:

End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World
by Bryan Walsh
Hachette Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

End Times is a compelling work of skilled reportage that peels back the layers of complexity around the unthinkable-and inevitable-end of humankind. From asteroids and artificial intelligence to volcanic supereruption to nuclear war, 15-year veteran science reporter and TIME editor Bryan Walsh provides a stunning panoramic view of the most catastrophic threats to the human race.

In End Times, Walsh examines threats that emerge from nature and those of our own making: asteroids, supervolcanoes, nuclear war, climate change, disease pandemics, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial intelligence. Walsh details the true probability of these world-ending catastrophes, the impact on our lives were they to happen, and the best strategies for saving ourselves, all pulled from his rigorous and deeply thoughtful reporting and research.

Walsh goes into the room with the men and women whose job it is to imagine the unimaginable. He includes interviews with those on the front lines of prevention, actively working to head off existential threats in biotechnology labs and government hubs. Guided by Walsh’s evocative, page-turning prose, we follow scientific stars like the asteroid hunters at NASA and the disease detectives on the trail of the next killer virus.

Walsh explores the danger of apocalypse in all forms. In the end, it will be the depth of our knowledge, the height of our imagination, and our sheer will to survive that will decide the future.

On My Radar:

When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew: A Memoir

by Hendrika de Vries

She Writes Press

Trade Paperback

From the book publicity:

Born in the Netherlands at a time when girls are to be housewives and mothers and nothing else, Hendrika de Vries is a “daddy’s girl” until her father is deported from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam to a POW camp in Germany and her mother joins the Resistance. In the aftermath of her father’s departure, Hendrika watches as freedoms formerly taken for granted are eroded with escalating brutality by men with swastika armbands who aim to exterminate those they deem “inferior” and those who do not obey. 


As time goes on, Hendrika absorbs her mother’s strength and faith, and learns about moral choice and forced silence. She sees her hidden Jewish “stepsister” betrayed, and her mother interrogated at gunpoint. She and her mother suffer near starvation, and they narrowly escape death on the day of liberation. But they survive it all―and through these harrowing experiences, Hendrika discovers the woman she wants to become.

* * * * * *

This beautifully crafted memoir reminds us that we are never far from oppression by those who wish to silence us.–– Maureen Murdock, author of The Heroine’s Journey: Woman’s Quest for Wholeness


She is a master storyteller. –– Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D.

* * * * * * *

Author of When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew, Hendrika de Vries’ life experiences, from the dark days of Nazi-occupied Amsterdam as a child, through her years as a swimming champion, young wife and mother in Australia, and a move to America in the sixties, have infused her work as a therapist, teacher, and writer. Hendrika holds a BA (with Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of Colorado, an MTS (cum laude) in theological studies from Virginia Theological Seminary, and an MA in counseling psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Read more on www.agirlfromamsterdam.com

Currently Reading:

Nights in White Castle: A Memoir
by Steve Rushin
Little, Brown and Company
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Picking up where he left off in his acclaimed memoir Sting-Ray Afternoons, Steve Rushin brilliantly captures a bygone era, and the thrills of new adulthood in the early 80s.

It begins in Bloomington, Minnesota, with a 13-year-old kid staging his own author photo that he hopes will someday grace the cover of a book jacket. And it ends at a desk in the legendary Time & Life building, with that same boy-now in his early 20s and writing professionally-reflecting on how the hell he got there from what seems like a distant universe. In between, Steve Rushin whisks us along on an extraordinarily funny, tender, and altogether unforgettable journey. 

From a menial summer job at suburban Bennigan’s, to first-time college experiences in Milwaukee, to surviving early adulthood in seedy New York City, this deeply touching odyssey will remind any reader of those special moments when they too went from innocence to experience.

In My TBR Stack:

Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime and Obsession
by Rachel Monroe
Scribner Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In this illuminating exploration of women, violence, and obsession, Rachel Monroe interrogates the appeal of true crime through four narratives of fixation. In the 1940s, a frustrated heiress began creating dollhouse crime scenes depicting murders, suicides, and accidental deaths. Known as the “Mother of Forensic Science,” she revolutionized the field of what was then called legal medicine. In the aftermath of the Manson Family murders, a young woman moved into Sharon Tate’s guesthouse and, over the next two decades, entwined herself with the Tate family. In the mid-nineties, a landscape architect in Brooklyn fell in love with a convicted murderer, the supposed ringleader of the West Memphis Three, through an intense series of letters. After they married, she devoted her life to getting him freed from death row. And in 2015, a teenager deeply involved in the online fandom for the Columbine killers planned a mass shooting of her own.

Each woman, Monroe argues, represents and identifies with a particular archetype that provides an entryway into true crime. Through these four cases, she traces the history of American crime through the growth of forensic science, the evolving role of victims, the Satanic Panic, the rise of online detectives, and the long shadow of the Columbine shooting. In a combination of personal narrative, reportage, and a sociological examination of violence and media in the twentieth and twenty-first century, Savage Appetites scrupulously explores empathy, justice, and the persistent appeal of violence.

In My TBR Stack:

Earthforms: Intimate Portraits of Our Planet
by Joel Simpson
JSS Books
Hardcover

From the book publicity:

"Earthforms: Intimate Portraits of Our Planet" is a boldly original book, both in its aesthetic-scientific-political concept, and in the way it extends what we all feel we know about landscape photography. "Earthforms" is not just another book with beautiful images. It goes far beyond the standard landscape concept, to turn an aesthetic eye on mineral configurations, putting you in remote places, where these special formations are close up and underfoot. In a time when climate change threatens the livability of our planet, Simpson seeks to direct the aesthetic force of his image collection towards deepening our commitment to environmental awareness and activism, with a specific dedication to the Lakota Water Protectors' courageous 2016 confrontation of the corporate and state powers that laid an oil pipeline that threatened the local water source. 

"Simpson flirts with chaos repeatedly, complicating the easy sensual analogies and undercutting the all-too-familiar 'surprises' of high-end nature photography."-LYLE REXER, author; critic, curator; columnist for PHOTOGRAPH magazine. 

"Simpson has an eye for naturally occurring patterns and structures, and he presents vivid mineral deposits and eye-catching rock formations. He compares a particularly notable formation to Edvard Munch's painting The Scream, and it's hard to deny the resemblance. The captions are informative and will help geological novices understand how the shapes developed. They also offer references to the works of other artists, and their placement in the book's final pages effectively allows readers to process the images separately. Although the environmentalist message is strong in the opening essays, Simpson's later commentary emphasizes natural beauty without reiterating the threat that it faces, letting readers draw the connection themselves."-KIRKUS REVIEWS

In My TBR Stack:

The FBI Accomplice of 9/11
by Patrick Pasin
Talma Studios
Trade Paperback

From the book publicity:

Did you know that FBI agents knew all details of September 11 in advance, including the date, the targets, the means, the perpetrators? Did you know that their hierarchy forbade them to warn the public under threat of prosecution?

Did you know that the FBI lost, manipulated, and even made disappear, evidence of what really happened?

And that is only the beginning of this book.

The time for an independent investigation on 9/11 and the FBI's (mis)conduct has come.

On My Radar:

King of King Court
by Travis Dandro
Drawn & Quarterly
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

From a child’s-eye view, Travis Dandro recounts growing up with a drug-addicted birth father, alcoholic step-dad, and overwhelmed mother. As a kid, Dandro would temper the tension of his every day with flights of fancy, finding refuge in toys and animals and insects rather than the unpredictable adults around him. Dandro perceptively details the effects of poverty and addiction on a family while maintaining a child’s innocence for as long as he can.

King of King Court spans from Travis’s early childhood through his teen years, focusing not only on the obviously abusive actions, but also on the daily slights and snubs that further strain relations between him and his parents. Alongside Dandro’s birth father committing crimes and shooting up, King of King Court lingers on scenes of him criticizing Travis and his siblings. Dandro gives equal heft to these anecdotes, emphasizing how damaging even relatively slight traumas can be to a child’s worldview.

As Travis matures into young adulthood and begins to understand the forces shaping his father’s toxic behaviours, the story becomes even more nuanced. Travis is empathetic to his father’s own tragic history, but unable to escape the cycle of misconduct and reprisals they are caught in. King of King Court is a revelatory autobiography that examines trauma, addiction, and familial relations in a unique and sensitive way.

In My TBR Stack:

Law and Addiction: A Legal Thriller
by Mike Papantonio
Waterside Productions
Hardcover

From the book publicity:

One week before his law school graduation, Jake Rutledge is shattered. His fraternal twin, Blake, has died of a drug overdose. Jake returns to his hometown of Oakley, West Virginia, to discover that his brother was not the only person hooked on opioid painkillers. The entire region has been ravaged by an epidemic insidiously planned and carried out by one of America’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies.

Still wet behind the ears, Jake is determined to seek justice for all the victims of Big Pharma’s greed. He soon learns that the drug companies’ tentacles reach far and deep. His only hope is to get Nicholas “Deke” Deketomis to help. A partner at one of the country’s most powerful law firms, Deke’s “as tough as a two-dollar steak” and well-known for his winning tactics against corporate wrongdoers. With just enough persistence, Jake coaxes Deke to see Oakley’s devastation firsthand. Overwhelmed, Deke agrees to join forces with Jake.

And that’s when the real heat begins. Death threats, bribes, unlawful property seizure schemes – all are connected to the massive distribution of both legal and illegal drugs. Everyone is impacted, from the highest levels of corporate America to corrupt local officials to their lackeys and hapless victims. The complexity of the schemes is overwhelming.

Working tirelessly, the lawyers begin to uncover the truth. Along the way, Jake falls in love with Anna Fowler, a former homecoming queen who has succumbed to the power of opioids. With his support, she weans herself off the drugs. Hope begins to bloom — when suddenly, Jake disappears. As Deke undertakes a desperate search to find him, questions swirl. Has Jake abandoned Anna and his crusade? Can the case against the evildoers move forward without him? Will Oakley and its residents survive? Law and Addiction is real-life drama at its finest — a book that clears away the darkness page by page, spotlighting a profound truth about our society through expert storytelling.

On My Radar:

Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing
by Elissa Altman
Ballantine Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

After surviving a traumatic childhood in nineteen-seventies New York and young adulthood living in the shadow of her flamboyant mother, Rita, a makeup-addicted former television singer, Elissa Altman has managed to build a very different life, settling in Connecticut with her wife of nearly twenty years. After much time, therapy, and wine, Elissa is at last in a healthy place, still orbiting around her mother but keeping far enough away to preserve the stable, independent world she has built as a writer and editor. Then Elissa is confronted with the unthinkable: Rita, whose days are spent as a flâneur, traversing Manhattan from the Clinique counters at Bergdorf to Bloomingdale’s and back again, suffers an incapacitating fall, leaving her completely dependent upon her daughter.

Now Elissa is forced to finally confront their profound differences, Rita’s yearning for beauty and glamour, her view of the world through her days in the spotlight, and the money that has mysteriously disappeared in the name of preserving youth. To sustain their fragile mother-daughter bond, Elissa must navigate the turbulent waters of their shared lives, the practical challenges of caregiving for someone who refuses to accept it, the tentacles of narcissism, and the mutual, frenetic obsession that has defined their relationship.

Motherland is a story that touches every home and every life, mapping the ferocity of maternal love, moral obligation, the choices women make about motherhood, and the possibility of healing. Filled with tenderness, wry irreverence, and unforgettable characters, it is an exploration of what it means to escape from the shackles of the past only to have to face them all over again.

On My Radar:

Days of Miracle and Wonder: 25 of the Most Incredible Sporting Victories
by Dave Tomlinson
Available for Kindle

From the book publicity:

The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat; the human drama of competition. It's these glorious ups and the torturous downs that are the fundamental allure of sport. The wonderful uncertainty is what keeps us excited and eagerly anticipating the next game. It can play out in different ways but nothing captures our imagination more than a contest which suddenly comes alive after the result appeared to be a foregone conclusion.

Days of Miracle and Wonder presents the unique stories behind 25 of the most incredible sporting victories. There are players and teams reaching the brink of success before spectacularly imploding into an unimaginable defeat. On the other hand, there are inspirational accounts of players and teams rising from the canvas and fighting their way back to a glorious win. These displays of human frailties, willpower, skill and courage capture everything we love about sport.

At its best, sport requires athletes to give more than they thought they could - physically, mentally and emotionally. Whether it's the anguish of a choke or the brilliance of a comeback, at the final whistle there can be only one winner. Names etched onto cups and trophies record these results, but sporting chapters are not written on the bare facts of score lines. The glory of sport is in the contest itself and through the pages of this book you'll see it can be a wild ride!